A Precious Few
by Forest Archer
Summary: As the Sentinels attack, there is nothing more Professor X and Magneto can do than wait for the end and think about what they could have been. In the past, Charles and Erik meet for a game of chess and struggle to establish a new future.
1. Chapter 1

(A/N: Set during Days of Future Past. The story is currently complete, though there may later be a second chapter.)

* * *

_"All those years wasted fighting each other, Charles. To have a precious few of them back..."_

* * *

They are sealed in. He knows because he did it himself, and even though he could move the metal aside again in an instant, Erik still feels the pressing weight as though they are entombed. The truth is that they are. One way or another, they are never coming out of here. Either they'll never have been here at all, or this is where they'll die.

He sags against the pillar, and finds that it is hard to breathe. He doesn't bother pressing a hand over the wound. There's no point trying to stop the bleeding because he's not unconscious yet and that means he still has a few minutes, at least, and that's really all any of them have now.

_It's not how I thought it would end_, he thinks, and he might as well have said it aloud. Charles is looking at him in that way he's always had, saying that he understands without ever needing words. It's always meant more to Erik than he could ever have admitted, and now it's too late for so many things.

He shifts, and pain slices through him. He's old, in mind more than body; he never would have let something like that slip through, before. Now it was a splinter of metal that had embedded itself in his stomach. Before, it could have been a missile on Cuba. It just wouldn't have happened.

But the pain lessens, gently ebbing away, and it doesn't return. Charles' expression hasn't changed, and Erik doesn't say a word, but he knows.

That's how it's always been between them.

There are so many regrets. Not for all the things he's done, because isn't this, here, ultimate proof that he was right all along? But being right is a hollow victory when this is his prize. What he regrets is that it brought them here; that his hate and blind determination have led them to this future. He doesn't know what they could have done differently, but he sees now that they could have _been _something different.

When he finds his voice, he realises that he means the words with everything he has, and he knows Charles understands that they're an apology, a wish, a confession.

"All those years wasted fighting each other, Charles. To have a precious few of them back..."

Such regret, and such grief, for all that they've done and all they couldn't do, all they are and all they should have been. But he grips Charles' hand and he doesn't know if it's his own mind or Charles', but he finds himself thinking of the good that they have been, all the same. He thinks of chess and clinking glasses, he thinks of training and the house and nights talking by the fireside. He thinks of those they've loved, not in the moments where they were lost, but in the years for which they were saved.

He thinks what they could be, if they could start again.

It all happens so quickly after that, and they have precious little time left. Bobby goes to guard them with his life, Kitty is fading, and Wolverine is as close to dying as he can ever come.

_Do you think it will make a difference?_ he thinks, looking away from Charles as the world ends around them. Metal screeches, ice cracks, and a man screams.

_I believe it will work._

Erik almost smiles, because Charles never gives up. _Not him,_ he amends, looking at the man groaning on the table._ Do you think we will be able to change? Do you think we'll understand?_

He isn't afraid of dying. He'll wake up to a new future or he won't wake up at all, and there's nothing he can do about that now. Somehow what he is afraid of is that he will never reach this point again in his own mind - that he will never realise for a second time that they should never have fought, that they could be so much more than enemies, that such a road led only to waste and ruin where there could have been so much life and joy.

If this works, then as young men they will have achieved something together. They will have learnt what happened, in one world. That they fought and they both lost and they came together in the end. Can that really change them?

People can evolve, but in his experience they don't change, not in the ways that count. Will they always come back to this, only realising the truth when it's too late to change?

Bobby's dead, and the Sentinels are coming. Heavy footsteps against stone count down the seconds until they die, or until this future does. Whatever happens, they're going to lose this one precious thing they've gained. Erik looks at Charles again, in the last moments that they have.

And he sees that Charles' eyes are blazing with fire that has nothing to do with the Sentinels, but is all him - all fierce hope and unyielding faith, believing in him more than Erik has ever done in himself, believing in both of them.

_We will change everything_.

The Sentinels are here. Logan has stopped moving. The room glows with flames, and Charles raises an arm to shield his face.

And in the last seconds of this life, Erik finds that same hope for the past.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the chessboard that told Charles he had a visitor.

He was in his study with papers spread out over the desk in front of him. It was late afternoon and a light, warm breeze from the open window disturbed the documents as he drew another sheaf of papers closer. It had been a long time since he had dealt with such paperwork, longer even than he'd realised. As he filled in details and signed his name, though, it was with determination he hadn't felt in years. There was a lot to do, but Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters would open for anyone who needed it.

These thoughts absorbed him, until something moved in the corner of the room. Charles twisted round, pen still caught between his fingers, to see a dusty chessboard extricating itself from one of the many piles of his possessions that he was yet to tidy. Even as he watched, it settled itself on his desk - on top, he noted with irritation, of a pile of completed forms - and a number of metal playing pieces followed, organising themselves into neat rows on the board.

The front door opened and closed a few seconds later.

"Anyone home?"

A few steps, and Erik was standing in the hallway, staring into the study and straight at Charles. And it _was_ Erik. This man, with no cape and no helmet, no Brotherhood around him, was not Magneto. Erik Lensherr was not exactly Charles' friend, but he did not have to be his enemy.

Charles capped the pen and set it down, buying himself a few moments in which to steady himself against the visit. He should have sensed Erik's arrival - except, he supposed, that it was so long since he had tried to link himself to that mind.

"Good afternoon, Erik."

"My word, Charles, you do play the professor well. Is this what you've been doing?"

"I have a school to re-establish," he said, finding the words strangely reassuring. "It requires rather more preparation than I remembered."

Erik cast a glance around the hall before entering the study. He went straight to the sideboard, taking a bottle and two glass tumblers without invitation. Accustomed to this directness, Charles didn't say a word but merely shifted a few papers to let Erik place them on the desk, and he began to pour as Erik dragged over a chair and sat on the other side of the chessboard.

It felt like a routine, something they'd been doing all their lives, when really it had only been a few days, more than a decade ago. Charles took a mouthful of the scotch, hating how familiar this felt.

In a version of the future, they had been more than this. Hadn't they? Logan had said they'd been working together, they'd _both_ sent him back to change the past. To stop the war. And yet the man in front of him, calmly drinking scotch as though they had all the time in the world, was adamant that the war needed to happen, that they had to fight, eliminate the humans to ensure their own survival. It was an idea that Charles had always balked at and always would. But the idea that Erik might change his mind - it had to be impossible.

And yet, the game was laid out in front of them. Charles hadn't played since that plane ride, and he couldn't resist the lure of another try. Resting his glass back on the desk, Charles leant forwards and made the first move, shifting a pawn forwards across the board.

He could have sworn Erik almost smiled.

"Where's Beast?" Erik asked, as one of his pieces slid across the board without him needing to move in his seat.

"He's at the airport," Charles said, and he couldn't help smiling himself as Erik looked at him curiously. "Alex is coming home."

_Home_. It felt good to say it, felt good that this place was going to be a home again, not just his prison. When had the building ever felt like that before? Sometimes, long ago, with Raven. Before the war, briefly, when it had been a school. And once, when a short-lived team had trained in it, had been something like a family.

Erik leant back, and for the first time Charles studied his face properly. He looked weary, dark circles under his eyes and exhaustion hollowing his cheeks. His hair was growing out untidily and he hadn't shaved in a while. Wherever he'd been, whatever he was doing, it was taking its toll.

And yet when he sighed, some of the weight he was carrying seemed to slip away. "That's good," he said softly, and Charles knew he meant it.

"How have you been, Erik?" He wouldn't ask what he had done - he had wondered ever since they parted ways, of course he had, but pressing Erik for his actions and his plans never gained him a straight answer, only defensiveness and mistrust. But how he was - that, he could not help but ask.

"Better than some," Erik replied shortly, his fists clenching. "They are still suffering."

For a few moves, they played in silence. Why had Erik come? The question pressed against Charles' mind, but he was not going to look in Erik's mind and nor would he speak it aloud, but he wondered. With all that was between them, why did Erik still come here, what did either of them still think chess could achieve?

When Charles did speak again, it was to offer Erik more scotch. He poured, and they drank again, and while the shadows grew longer outside they moved their pieces around the board, taking an opponent's piece now and then, but neither making any significant gains. They were well matched, these days.

It was Erik who broke the silence.

"I see you're back in the chair."

The words startled him out of his thoughts, and Charles could only look blankly at Erik for a moment. His bluntness was hardly surprising, but there was an aggressive edge to the sentence that made it something more than a mild observation.

"If you came here to pick a fight-"

"I'm just glad you seem to have established your priorities."

The sudden bitterness in Erik's voice was matched in his own. "My priorities?" he repeated, anger surging up even as he wondered how the conversation had turned this way. "Do not judge me, Erik, do not pretend you understand."

Erik's eyes blazed and he stood, suddenly incensed. "You had a choice!" Erik said, his voice full of fury. "They needed you and you did nothing to help them, you suppressed your own powers and left them to their pain! They needed us!"

And Charles realised, in an instant, why he had come. He was still looking for answers, not just for why Charles had not acted, but why neither of them had been enough to save the mutants they had meant to protect.

As if Charles' own guilt and regret were not already enough.

"I didn't know how! You act like I can control this like you control metal, Erik, but when they are all in my head at once there's nothing I can do. Rage and serenity do not work for me when I cannot distinguish my own thoughts from theirs!"

"You are not the only one suffering, Charles!"

"Oh? When you use your power, when you reach out for metal, do you hear it screaming?"

There, barely visible, only really apparent in his silence, Erik faltered. Charles' hands flexed around the arm rests of the chair, as though he had Erik's power to rip it apart.

"They are always there," he said, and his voice fell down to a whisper. "So much _pain_, always. Do you think I don't know about their suffering? Do you imagine that I don't feel it every second when I..."

He broke off, now clawing at his unfeeling legs. Words seemed to fail Erik, too, and for a long moment it was quiet, just the two of them there, separated by a chessboard and too much history, and futures that still seemed set on such different paths even after all they've changed.

When he spoke his words were careful, measured, but trembling. "Can you not understand why I needed to let that go? Why I would rather have my freedom?"

He knew the weight that word carried, proven by the way the other man flinched almost imperceptibly, and tried to cover it by shifting in his chair. After all Erik had gone through in lost liberty, Charles knew that the biggest gesture was in what he wasn't doing; he wasn't wearing the helmet, even after he had learnt firsthand how easily Charles could control him without it.

So much between them. So much hate and fear, but also desperate hope which Charles had thought was utterly lost to them both. It had come from the future with frantic haste; a future that wasn't there any more, but in which after so many terrible actions, more terrible still than all that had already passed, he and Erik had worked together, finally wanted the same thing, wanted peace. They had seen what they could have been.

And here, in the past and the present, they sat with the chessboard frozen in a tableau of battle, metal figures scattered around the board, their pieces beginning to mingle in the fight, and Charles could not remember whose turn it was. He stared at the board and concentrated until he could no longer see it, blocking out Erik, trying to tune his mind out of that constant rush of whispering, shouting, screaming, because they might have won the mutants hope but there was still so very much fear.

A knight slid across the board, and pulled him out of the terror in his mind. Erik had sat down again and Charles could feel him watching. He would be searching for Charles' mind in his own, trying to judge Charles' own thoughts, but he would not find him there. It couldn't be that easy between them, not again.

Still, Erik had made a move, and Charles leaned forward. He frowned, eyes darting around the board, judging tactics and what he knew of the way Erik played. And he couldn't find the pattern.

Which was, he realised after a long time, because there wasn't one.

Without needing to look up, he could feel Erik watching him - and it was nothing to do with his powers, but came simply from knowing Erik. The man was waiting, weighing him up, seeing what he would do.

Erik never played chess without tactics. Before he moved a piece he would have already considered each response Charles might take, and what his own reaction would be. In chess, he was order, precision, and strategy. Charles stood a chance against him only because he had come to understand how his friend played.

But that move made no sense. The knight had been protecting his king, and in moving had left his flank open to attack. No matter how long he studied the board, he couldn't understand the move.

Unless Erik was trying to let him attack.

He looked up, unsurprised to find Erik's eyes steady on him, but found no answer in that impassive face. Was it futile to see it as a peace offering? It was only one move in a game, but chess had always been more than that for them.

He didn't want to be looking for that, he had thought he was past waiting with that unwavering faith that Erik would find a better path. But it had taken a glimpse into the future to make him start to realise that he was never really going to stop, even if it took the rest of his life.

Erik's eyes flicked back to the board as Charles moved a piece of his own, and to his great satisfaction surprise flashed over Erik's face. His had been an equally stupid move, ignoring the advantage he had been offered. It was Erik's turn, now, to narrow his eyes and look intently at the board, trying to draw answers out from the pieces.

They sat in silence again, which Charles was unable to break because he felt his mind was racing too fast to pull words from it. Denial and reason were faltering against the persistent rush of something else, something warm and light and unyielding.

He didn't know what was going to happen. So much had changed, in so short a time, and he'd spent all that time pushing away from a future he knew he couldn't live. That future was gone now, prevented, but he found himself floundering now that he didn't know what would take its place. He had known, briefly, the kind of person he was going to become, and that was gone now. He knew he needed to control his power, because Logan had told him how many people he could help. Perhaps that it was how he had done it in that future; stop the screaming by ending the suffering, fill the school with students and help them bear their pain.

But he did not know if _he _could bear it. Already he wanted to help them, knew there was nothing better he could do, but the fear of it still gripped like a vice round his lungs, threatening to overwhelm him with panic. He could have his freedom, but that would take so much from so many others.

And it was lonely. It was desperately lonely, because the only person who understood had been _himself_, and for all he knew it had taken all the decades between them for him to tame his power. He had Hank, and they would have Alex soon, but they had lost so much. There was a school to rebuild and they would all look to him to be something so much more than he was.

He was breathing hard and quickly, his thoughts spiralling, until they brushed against something else - something unexpectedly warm, almost as solid and steady as if it had been beneath his fingertips.

Charles recoiled from Erik's mind. He hadn't consciously stopped blocking it which meant his defences must have slipped, and now Erik was watching him with an expression he didn't want to try to understand. With a great effort of concentration, he forced himself not to find out what it meant.

But that didn't stop Erik speaking.

"You are not alone."

Derisive laughter bubbled in Charles' throat, and there was so much he wanted to say about having his own words parroted back to him because he _knew_ he wasn't alone, he couldn't escape that knowledge. But laughter and words died before they passed his lips because Erik's eyes were boring into him, and there was so much more that he meant.

Erik stood abruptly, and came around the table with his usual smooth grace and crouched down in front of the chair. He gripped Charles' wrist, both their hands resting on legs that couldn't feel them.

"We are not alone," he said, his voice quiet and his words firm. Not a promise, and certainly not an apology, just a statement. Just the truth.

He pressed an object into Charles' hand. Then he was pulling away, standing up; resolute one moment, then hesitating the next, as though there was more he wanted to say. But he didn't speak, and Charles' voice seemed to have abandoned him, and Erik strode across the room with soft footsteps that creaked gently on the floorboards, leaving the room with an unintelligible whirl of thoughts.

Charles followed his progress without really meaning to, aware the moment Erik closed the front door behind him even though he shut it too quietly to hear.

There was a little chess piece balanced on his palm, the metal cool and smooth against his skin. He was holding Erik's king. It was the first time either of them had ever resigned a game.

And the feeling that had been growing in him over the evening eclipsed, for a moment, everything else in his mind. They had a chance. The future was unknown, now, but an uncertain fate was better than the terrible one that he had once let himself think they were being drawn to. They weren't allies. He wasn't even sure they were friends. Erik had done terrible things - and he, Charles, had let terrible things happen. They'd both made mistakes they couldn't change.

But he clenched his fist and held the king until the metal began to grow warm in his hands, until his heart seemed to beat with the word _hope, hope, hope_.

It was only a moment. But it was a start, because he was beginning to think that one day Erik's words would be true for good.


End file.
